Denim Mills on Their Bestselling Fabrics and Fiber Blends for Fall/Winter 2027-28
At Kingpins Show New York, mills from around the globe showcased samples from their Fall/Winter 2027-28 collections.
Some of the key trends that are catching on are colors that take denim beyond the classic blue jean, heavier weights, printed textiles and novel fiber choices that provide texture and softness. In an era of denim where anything goes and designers are developing a wide range, brand customers are looking for fabrics that are versatile and able to achieve more types of looks.
“As far as silhouette is concerned, everything’s happening, and you can say the same thing for fabric,” said Aylin Beyce, creative director of AGI Denim. “It’s really just the nuance of it that makes it feel unique and exciting and new.”
As consumer budgets tighten, retail competition is heating up and brands need to give consumers a reason to spend by creating newness and differentiation. “Brands have to increase their costs, so they need to have something interesting and value added for their product set,” said Rajesh Gupta, design and creative head at Arvind Denim. “That is what we are doing, so that consumers get a higher value for the amount that they are spending.”
The industry is still leaning toward comfort stretch or rigid constructions over super stretchy fabrics.
Advance Denim has seen traction around its comfort stretch styles using Lycra VintageFX and its 100 percent cotton mechanical stretch styles. Interest is also picking up around its fabrics incorporating Tencel Lyocell – HV100; among the pieces it showed was a 100 percent HV100 jean.
Maritaş’ customers have also been gravitating toward low to no stretch, such as a blend of 60 percent cotton and 40 percent Tencel or a mix of 99 percent cotton and 1 percent spandex.
Raymond Uco sees women’s denim—including for European fast-fashion brands—lean toward 100 percent cotton, while men’s denim is opting for some comfort stretch. As part of its samples at Kingpins, the India-based mill also showcased jacquards and selvedge denim, seeing that as denim’s direction ahead. Nishat has also witnessed a continental divide in stretch, with the U.S. favoring comfort stretch and Europe gravitating toward rigid jeans.
While high stretch is still in the minority, some mills are starting to see it creep back. Naveena Denim Mills’ (NDM) response is a four-way stretch, 70 percent elasticity denim that includes Tencel. “It gives you the rear comfort, soft hand feel, but in the meantime, the authenticity,” explained Berke Aydemir, senior general manager R&D and technical sales at NDM.
AGI Denim is also starting to see momentum in higher stretch up to around 50 percent, with companies beginning to sample more elastic denim for both men and women. Currently, trends are favoring ‘90s style slouchy cuts, but it’s just a matter of time before they evolve. “They’re still in baggy mode, but I think the very natural next step will be a tighter leg flare… and then before you know it, the skinny jean with the low rise is back,” said Henry Wong, vice president of product development and marketing at AGI Denim.
“We’re seeing a move not to extreme stretch, but kind of sitting right around 25 percent elasticity,” said Chris Price, director of sales and business development for Prosperity and Stella Blu. “It’s a noticeable uptick from where we’ve been in the recent seasons.”
One directional shift revolves around material weight. While women’s denim tends to hover closer to 10 or 11 ounces, Diamond Denim by Sapphire is seeing heavier weights like 13 ounces selling well. Meanwhile, men’s denim is shifting from the previously popular 14-ounce rigid weight to around a 12-ounce denim with stretch, as both genders seek out what they haven’t previously had available to them. Similarly, Bossa is seeing weights of 13-plus ounces resonate for men’s jeans. Even if jeans are heavier, some mills are using materials like viscose and lyocell that make jeans feel lighter than they are.
Some of Dynamic Denim’s most popular styles are selvedge weaves between 12 and 15 ounces. The mill also presented its European-style Renaissance collection, for which it collaborated with a Turkish design team.
Indicative of the denim market’s current diversity, Arvind Denim has seen weights get lighter.
Traditionally a workwear-focused mill, Mount Vernon is early into its fashion denim development as it goes from “Walmart to Wall Street.” The appetite for its selvedge is there, so the main constraint is capacity and speed, since it produces around 40 yards of the selvedge denim per day. “The selvedge is going to outsell everything if we can make it fast enough,” said Tim Harris, director of customer relations at Mount Vernon. He added, “We’ve been doing denim for a long time, but this this denim is different.”
Material moves
Mills are also incorporating less expected denim materials, branching out beyond cotton.
“This season, we try to [go] back to fundamental, to the pastime…how to use natural fiber like the cotton, linen, silk and wool,” said Vincent Qin, marketing director at Dynamic Denim. “But we still combine some new spinning technology, weaving technology, to bring some new experience to customers.”
AGI’s Wellness Edit concept—which centers on soft, comfortable denim—includes materials like hemp, wool, silk and lyocell. This collection features tactile touches like brushed textures and chenille.
Linen is often associated with warmer weather styles, but denim mills including Dynamic Denim, Naveena Denim Mills, TCE and Artistic Milliners are bringing it into the colder months. “[Linen is] supposedly a summer fiber, but depending on the weight of the fiber, the color of the fabric, people are selecting it for winter, summer, both,” said Baber Sultan, director research, product and trend at Artistic Milliners.
Both SM Denim Mills and TCE noted that customers are looking for a single fabric that can bridge all seasons.
However, there were still developments highlighted at Kingpins that catered specifically to colder months. Fittingly for a season that is all about coziness, hand feel is a key component for future Fall collections, and mills are providing technology and fiber blends that deliver on this.
XDD Denim has found traction with its Souffle Denim collection that uses low-twist yarn to create a fluffier denim textile out of 100 percent cotton, which fits the continuing trend of baggier styles.
Artistic Milliners’ development for supreme softness is Stealth+, a spinning technology that creates “buttery soft” yarns. Sultan described it as authentic-looking denim that feels like sweatpants. The material is 15 ounces—allowing for the tensile strength that comes with that weight—but feels more like 11 ounces.
Soorty’s Campus capsule brings in comfortable touches like slight stretch and Tencel while giving the appearance of an authentic vintage ‘90s jean. The mill is also seeing an uptick in demand for cross hatches and mid-tier stretch.
In addition to its softness-focused Dream Feel collection, Panther Denim has seen customers opting for hues beyond indigo. The mill’s Retro Dye offering enables customers to create their own colors that are compatible with denim laundries, leveraging its combined know-how in denim and piece dyeing.
Naveena Denim Mills also responded to the color appetite with a handful of new sulfur-based earth tone shades that wash down similarly to indigo dye. The mill has also added new indigo colors including browns and grays that wash down to show blue tones, as well as coated indigo denim that puts a different spin on the color.
Diamond Denim by Sapphire’s bestseller is Decadence, a gray denim with a soft coating. And Soorty’s Rebellion Noir concept leverages overdyeing, creating dark, moody denim.
Dynamic Denim is giving white denim a “cozy” feeling for fall and winter by adding a “wool quality” to the weft. The mill also worked with bio-based dye firm Chloris to develop a color that resembles vintage French workwear.
Prosperity Textile is starting to see a shift toward slubby textures—seen in its Retro Weaves line—from marble open-end weaves that fall under its Neo Vintage concept. “Customers aren’t really ready to move completely to the more extreme slub texture, but we’re seeing a gradual move to it,” noted Price.
Rajby has also noticed a demand shift from marble denim towards “clean,” “defined” looks, such as its Quiet Luxury concept. It’s also seeing interest in its Color Theory concept, which offers custom colors, tints and overdyes for “old-school” cast looks.
In its non-denim division, Nishat is seeing collegiate, preppy looks trending. Some of the key fabrics are heritage broken twills, reverse sateens, corduroy and reverse twills. For denim, the manufacturer sees companies going for structural looks with some marbling, visible slubs, cracked looks, bluish gray or greenish casts and pale shades. The mill has also created “easy color denim,” which applies a chemical to warp yarn before weaving. It is sold as an ecru denim, and when customers piece dye the jean, only the warp is colored.
Another trend on the floor were woven patterns, including stripes, animal print, checkerboard and houndstooth designs.
When it comes to washes, the trends diverge across the key consumer continents. “The U.S. is more prone towards subtle washes, cleaner ones, but the Europeans are very confined towards more fashion ones, rips and repairs,” said Ali Kazmi, director marketing at SM Denim Mills.
Gupta from Arvind has also seen brands opt for commercial washes over dirty or “over-the-top” looks.
Indonesian mill Badjatex is an early user of Jeanologia’s B-Evox finishing system, which follows ozone treatment with a final machine that provides the “magic” to create authentic looks and make fabrics easier to manage by minimizing shrinking. Some of the samples the manufacturer showed were a jean jacket with a laser design in the shape of mountains and a pair of distressed jeans.
Fiber Focus
In addition to mills, material brands joined the show floor at Kingpins to showcase innovation and fiber stories.
One year after entering the denim category, Eastman’s Naia was at Kingpins to connect with the denim community and communicate about how the fiber can “transform denim from the inside out” by adding comfort to the weft side of jeans with quick-drying properties, lightness and softness. The main focus was on Naia Renew, its cellulose acetate fiber made from wood and recycled plastic waste. Naia Renew can be blended with cotton or Tencel, adding performance to the denim, creating a “lighter weight garment that still feels like denim, but has a fashion and very versatile style to it,” said Chad Doub, global segment market manager – casualwear and home at Eastman.
Naia has a global denim mill network that includes many of the exhibitors at Kingpins, and it’s already made it to retail with brands like Calvin Klein Jeans. The denim portion of the Naia business is scaling up, with Doub anticipating double-digit growth over the next year.
Wood-based fiber maker Lenzing’s main fiber focus at Kingpins Show was Tencel Lyocell – HV100, which it launched last year. The fiber innovation varies the cut lengths of fibers so that the man-made cellulosic material more closely resembles grown fibers like cotton and hemp. At the Tencel booth, the fiber producer showcased the second edition of its sample collections for HV100—created in partnership with 10 mills—as well as a retail example from Zara. In total, 36 mills have partnered with Lenzing to develop denim using the fiber.
Cotton Incorporated used its presence at Kingpins to get the word out about microplastics, encouraging attendees to opt for natural materials and “Dive into Better Denim.” As part of its wider “Plant Not Plastic” messaging efforts, the marketing and promotion organization for cotton hosted an aquatic-themed photo booth complete with oceanic flora and fauna fashioned from denim.
“Our market insights data shows that 67 percent of textile professionals said their companies are actively taking steps to reduce microplastics pollution,” said Bev Sylvester, chief marketing officer at Cotton Incorporated. “Denim was built on cotton, and our presence at Kingpins New York reminds attendees, as the industry considers fiber sourcing, that authentic denim is cotton.”
This article is courtesy of SJ Denim.